Are you just walking on the words?

From the desk of Kris…

I love this quote by Paolo Friere: “Reading is not walking on words.  It’s grasping the soul of them.”  When I was a child I walked all over words.  I stomped on them and tromped on them and could read anything that was put in front of me.  I had the phonetic code worked out!  I was always told I was such a good reader!  When I was in first grade I remember having to walk down the hall to a SECOND grade classroom for reading time.  “How exciting!” and “What a great honor!”,  I was told.  But I cried everyday because I didn’t want to leave my classroom.  Somehow being a great reader felt like a punishment and I was being cast out. (A small digression but a tidbit to keep in mind as children get pulled out of their classroom for a variety of reasons….it may not be the most nurturing, learning friendly path).  Needless to say, I was not successful in this second grade classroom.

Fast reading while pronouncing all of the words correctly was considered good reading in my classrooms growing up.  While I was walking all over the words, I was grasping nothing of their soul.  I had no clue what I was reading and no one ever taught me otherwise.  Therefore, success in school was difficult for me.  What was wrong with me if I was considered such a good reader but didn’t comprehend a word of it?  What was I missing? How I got through school is a mystery.  I learned to compensate but never really could put my finger on what was making me successful as an adult reader.  Now I know about comprehension strategies and how they would have saved me immeasurable grief!  I cannot stress enough the importance of teaching comprehension strategies to your students in order to save them from this same grief.

When you are holding guided reading groups or reader’s workshop, frame your lessons with a clear purpose that will aid students in comprehension.  Stephanie Harvey clearly spells these out in her book, Strategies That Work.  Teach your students to visualize, question, talk back to the text, and sift through information in order to determine importance. Teach them about their inner voice.  I remember reading for school and counting how many pages I had left to read.  I  prided myself on finishing the pages quickly and checking that assignment off of my list!  Fast reading=Good reading for me.  The whole time I was reading though, my inner voice was pondering the best snack, which TV shows were on that night, and which cute boys were in which class.  This is NOT the inner voice one needs to have while reading!  Reading instruction will make more sense when you begin to think of it as a time to give students a tip or strategy that will help them become better readers. Give them a gift that they can carry with them throughout their life. They will appreciate it!  If you teach students HOW to read, not just the words, but also how to comprehend, they can read and learn anything.

There are times even now as an adult that I struggle with a text.  I have to consciously use my strategies in order to navigate the text.  But at least I have strategies on which to rely!  Would we want anything less for our students? We don’t want them to walk on the surface of words, we want them to ‘grasp the soul of them’.